An ongoing review of politics and culture

My review of the new Aaron Sorkin/Mike Nichols collaboration, Charlie Wilson’s War, is now up at NRO. Like a numberof critics I found it mildly amusing at times, but was frustrated by both its superficiality and its neutered politics. (And I say that as perhaps the only right-leaning fan of both The West Wing and The American President.)

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It was the CIA, against the objections of the Afghanis themselves, that got the Saudis and bin Laden involved in the Muhajadeen. Not Wilson. Point of fact.

Second, Jules Verne? Father of Science Fiction? He always had deeply personal characters working against broader societal issues with technology substituting for magic. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? Nemo is an exiled Maharajah making war upon the British, but in doing so with technology transforms himself far from the Indian identity he started out with. He literally becomes a man of the future. And the people involved in his struggle are ordinary folks, struggling to get out but fascinated by his “magic.”

Wells would fit into the coldly technological, but he was the student not the master and Heinlein, Dick, others all wrote deeply personal, character-oriented studies. Starship Troopers is a sci-fi response to Pearl Harbor, narrated rah-rah style by what people assume is Captain America but is revealed in the last few pages to be a working class Filipino. Philip K Dick’s entire output would stand as rebuke to the idea that science fiction represents cold techno explorations of big issues.

In re “Charlie Wilson’s War”: I’ll make this short.
I think you expected too much, Peter. Sorkin and Nichols have made a very traditional American movie about some mavericks who cut through the BS and red tape of government to do something good.
You have to remember that it is a movie, not a foreign policy white paper. ‘Valley of Elah’, ‘Redacted’ etc., forgot this. They failed because they were vague, preachy, and ultimately did not entertain.
If you found some of the dialog ‘same old’, all I can say is that I don’t watch television, don’t own one, so Sorkin’s work is new to me.
In CWW we learn that our government fails us often, but dedication to higher ideals can produce positive results despite that. In doing soCWW has great scenes and great lines that (1) build character in its protagonists, (2) advance the plot, and (3) are often funny. These are the foundations of a good screenplay.
And the politics? Nothing to say? When did you last see a movie that has all of its main characters working to defeat Communism with such open enthusiasm? No average American who sees this movie will learn anything other that we’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys, and the world’s a complicated place.
I liked it immensely, as a movie and as a message, albeit one that Sorkin probably didn’t intend. One day it might be appreciated in the same class as ‘Casablanca’.

I really enjoyed the books following Ender’s game as a child, but rereading them in college, I thought that by sometime in Xenocide and Children of the Mind, Card had dropped everything to sit around saying “So guys, I’m smart.” He ends up treating his characters as just proxies for him to spout new and bizarre theories of physics or social organization.